No prompt to update linked activities when rescheduling an activity in an Activity Series [ Edited ]

[ATGC]

Hi all,

Just updated a client to v18 from v15 and now they don't receive a prompt to shift the linked activities by the same number of days they reschedule one of the activities in the series.

e.g.

Activity series has 3 tasks:

01/01/2016 - Day 0 - Make a call

03/01/2016 - Day 2 - Have a meeting

06/01/2016 - Day 5 - Some kind of To-do

Reschedule Activity for Day 0 to 02/01/2016 (forward 1 day)

There is no prompt to shift the Activities following that ahead 1 day. So the below is what results:

02/01/2016 - Day 0 - Make a call

03/01/2016 - Day 2 - Have a meeting

06/01/2016 - Day 5 - Some kind of To-do

Instead of:

02/01/2016 - Day 0 - Make a call

04/01/2016 - Day 2 - Have a meeting

07/01/2016 - Day 5 - Some kind of To-do

- Act! Premium Version 18.0.501.0, Hot Fix 4

- Happening on desktops Shared from a server and on remotes

- Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10

- No other feedback or error messages

- I also tested on my own Windows 8 PC running Act! Premium Version 17.2.217.0 and get the same problem

- Found the following KB which is very unhelpful - http://kb.swiftpage.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/37162

Any ideas\input would be fantastic. Thanks in advance.

[Gary W · Accepted solution]

To expand on this issue:

We've identified a defect thanks to your feedback.
In Tools > Preferences > Calendar & Activities > Activity Preferences there is a check box labelled ‘Create separate activities when scheduling with multiple contacts’. If this is unchecked, then any new activity series can be rescheduled and will result in the prompt to reschedule linked activities. If this option is checked, any activity series scheduled will not produce the prompt.
Note: This will only affect newly created series after a change is made to this option, previously created ones will not be affected.

Please can you check the machines where you are seeing this issue, and let us know what state this option is?

This defect has been logged as Defect D-04223

[Gary W]

Hi Matthew,

I've tested this with the scenario you described and was not able to replicate the issue in v18.0.501.0 HF4 on W7. The reschedule dialog worked as designed.

Does the issue occur for you in any other databases, i.e. the demo DB, or for any other DB users?

Does this occur after recreating the activity series from scratch?

[ATGC]

Yes. Tried on clients upgraded database. Tried with new activity series. Tried on multiple databases including the 2014 demo on my v17.2 database machine on my own laptop. Other ACCs I work with have also seen the same issue. Would it be dot net related...? My colleague said his client updated from v17.1 to v17.2 and reported this issue was occurring post update. What is responsible for this function to be triggered?

Cheers

[ATGC]

By the way. There is a KB article which acknowledges the problem but has not solution. It is a critical part of my clients day to day business operations.

[Gary W]

Hi Matthew,

I would suggest you try detaching and re-attaching the database from SQL. It might be a problem with the migration from old versions to higher versions and the databases needing to be refreshed.

Are you running Act as admin?
Have you tried running DB repairs from Act Diag?

[ATGC]

Hi Gary,

Done that and tried again without any luck. The client has said it definitely worked in v15 that they were previously using. I'm curious to know if it is SQL 2014 related...? Perhaps a trigger that isn't firing properly in the SQL tables.

[Gary W]

The only other thing I could suggest would be to create an empty copy of DB by using File > Save Copy As, creating a couple of test contacts in the new DB, and an activity series and checking for the same behaviour when rescheduling.

If this doesn't work, I would recommend giving us a call and speaking to a technician to investigate the situation more closely.

[rucorosa]

Is this the same problem as described here?

https://community.act.com/t5/Act/Field-Triggers-v18-Pro/m-p/316268/highlight/true#M77199

If so, it's still pending as of today. This is a critical part of our workflow as well and we're all anxiously awaiting a fix.

[ATGC]

Hi rucorosa,

Different issue. The issue in the article you posted relates to the action of changing a field with an activity series trigger on it.

The issue described above here is modifying an existing Activity Series task and it not prompting you to shift the entire series of activities by the same number of days or just the one activity.

[ATGC]

Any word yet Gary...? My client is becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of communication and expected fix date for this and other issues...

Just being communicated with regularly is better than complete silence...

I believe that through much time/energy and trial and error I have narrowed it down to the version of Windows OS that is being used as the host and the client PC. My client is using almost exclusively Windows 2008 R2 and above (incl. Windows 8 and up on their client machines apart from a couple). When I tested upgrading their database on a Windows 7 machine, it works!

So, can we please get some information into the hands of the development team to work out what is different in the way Windows 7 Act! v17.2 and above works compared with Windows 8 and above and get a hotfix delivered!?

Also note that if you move the database to a Windows 7 host and open the database across the network to a newer Windows version, e.g. on my machine which is Windows 8.1, Activity Series scheduled on the Windows 7 host work, but any scheduled by the Windows 8.1 PC don't work from either machine when re-scheduling... - Definitely not a workable situation... most PCs are newer than Windows 7 these days...

I have a feeling also that it could all be related to Windows 7 not having .Net 4/4.5 integrated into it and Windows versions newer do have it integrated... something is missing in the libraries or is failing under the hood...